doc_searls - Yule Heibel on Diigo

Nov

10

2010

Doc Searls Weblog · The Data Bubble II

Great blog post from Doc Searls:

QUOTE
Right now it’s hard to argue against all the money being spent (and therefore made) in the personalized advertising business—just like it was hard to argue against the bubble in tech stock prices in 1999 and in home prices in 2004. But we need to come to our senses here, and develop new and better systems by which demand and supply can meet and deal with each other as equally powerful parties in the open marketplace. Some of the tech we need for that is coming into being right now. That’s what we should be following. Not just whether Google, Facebook or Twitter will do the best job of putting crosshairs on our backs.

John’s right that the split is between dependence and independence. But the split that matters most is between yesterday’s dependence and tomorrow’s independence—for ourselves. If we want a truly conversational economy, we’re going to need individuals who are independent and self-empowered. Once we have that, the level of economic activity that follows will be a lot higher, and a lot more productive, than we’re getting now just by improving the world’s biggest guesswork business.
UNQUOTE

blogs.law.harvard.edu/...the-data-bubble-ii

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doc_searls marketing data

Nov

19

2009

Doc Searls Weblog · Beyond Social Media

Thought-provoking post by Doc Searls: social media is "a crock." What's ignored in all the social media hype is the infrastructure that underwrites the private real estate of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. The other problem with social media is that "as a concept (if not as a practice) it subordinates the personal."

"Personal and social go hand-in-hand, but the latter builds on the former."

"Markets are built on the individuals we call customers. They’re where the ideas, the conversations, the intentions (to buy, to converse, to relate) and the money all start. Each of us, as individuals, are the natural points of integration of our own data — and of origination about what gets done with it. "

blogs.law.harvard.edu/...beyond-social-media

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doc_searls socialmedia infrastructure internet

May

2

2008

Comparing hard and soft infrastructure | Linux Journal

This is the 2nd in what looks to be a series. As the title indicates, Doc Searls compares infrastructures -- what we'd traditionally consider infrastructure (the "hard" infrastructure of roads, sewers, etc.) and Linux/ the Net -- programming -- the "soft" infrastructure that pervades our existence today.

www.linuxjournal.com/...g-hard-and-soft-infrastructure

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infrastructure linux doc_searls

- Infrastructure is natural. That is, we try to make it as additional to nature as possible. It sometimes improves on nature, but more often serves as an adjuct to it, altering it in some way, always for practical purposes.
- Infrastructure is patchy. In computing terms, we patch and debug it all the time. Even terminology changes. CATV becomes COMS becomes BROADBAND, all on a series of manhole covers. Sidewalks of brick are torn up and laid down again, over and over. Asphalt streets are patchworks of exposed and buried culverts, piping and conduit.
- Credit is interesting, but secondary.Companies providing infrastructure sign their work, often in forms that last decades or centuries. At a certain point this credit-taking ceases to be promotional and begins becoming archival, historical. Steel service covers bear the signatures of Edison Electric Illuminating, the Bell System, Cambridge Electric Lighting, McClure (a dead fiber company), MetroMedia (another dead fiber company), and Simpson Brothers, and countless other names once considered, mostly by themselves, as permanent.
- Re-usability matters. Pipes and poles made for one thing get used and re-used for other things. Poles that first carried electricity later came to carry phone, cable TV, and fiber optic cabling to carry phone, TV and internet service.
- Ease of servicability matters. Streets are marked everywhere with red (electric), yellow (gas), green (non-potable water), orange (communications), blue (potable water) and white (planned construction) graffiti. That these are all ugly is of little concern.
- Infrastructure is vernacular. It's local, and the expertise behind it is local.
- Yule Heibel on 2008-05-02
  So in other words, infrastructure works or manifests differently depending on the density context -- and it might be much more efficient the more dense and networked its connections and build-out are.
  
  Efficient doing what? Efficient at giving people time to focus on things other than providing their own private infrastructure (personal car, eg.).
- Yule Heibel on 2008-05-02
  For reference, the Bloomberg article:
  http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/01/967843.aspx
- 1 more sticky notes...
- - Yule Heibel on 2008-05-02
    Something else to consider here: density affects infrastructure, and therefore how socio-political trends manifest. For eg., NYC Mayor Bloomberg, in support of Obama's opposition to a gas tax holiday, said, "The last thing we need to do is to encourage people to drive more and to take away the monies we need for infrastructure in this country."
    
    He added that we need to get people out of their cars. I completely agree, so I was really struck by some "tweets" that high gas prices would keep people from driving to the polling stations! Ok, those tweets were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there was a kernel of truth in them. If you live in a city (like NYC), which has great density, you'll have access to public transportation (infrastructure) and you won't need a private car to "get to the polling station." However, as soon as you get to the suburbs, that piece of infrastructure could easily not be there, and you then might well be dependent on having a car to vote.
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